


Tandem

by respoftw



Series: 2018 Hurt/Comfort Bingo [23]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 23:15:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16774867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/respoftw/pseuds/respoftw
Summary: The Wraith tag Rodney with a tracker, John needs to cut it out.





	Tandem

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Forced to hurt someone.

Rolling over with a groan, Rodney emptied the contents of his stomach on the ground next to him. The ground was a mossy, leafy green, dusted with discarded pine needles from the trees that surrounded him.Like most planets they gated to, it could have been mistaken for Canada.Considering that his last memory was of being swept up in the beam of a Wraith dart, he really hoped it wasn’t.

“Damnit, Rodney.” 

Rodney groaned again as he felt hands patting him over. Going by the fact that he’d just heard John curse his name, he assumed the hands belonged to his team leader and he wasn’t in any immediate danger so he continued with the whole heaving his guts out thing until his stomach was empty and all he could do was gag on the air.

“D’you shoot me down?” Rodney asked, spitting to clear the taste from his mouth. “Oh God, I hurt all over. Even my eyelashes hurt. Why do my eyelashes hurt?” Rodney shifted himself up, John’s hand moving with him, and inched himself away from the mess he’d made on the forest floor. Looking up, he caught his first look of John and immediately knew that something was wrong.

Well, _more_ wrong than what he’d already suspected.

“What is it?” he asked. He knew it had to be bad because John looked.... wrecked was the only word that came to hand. His skin was pale with shock, beads of sweat dotting at his forehead and his eyes were dark, the hazel green almost completely swallowed by the dark fire of anger in a way Rodney hadn’t seen since the Genii had taken the city. Looking around, he realised that they were alone and in the middle of nowhere. “Teyla? Ronon? Oh, God, did the Wraith take them, did they - -“ Rodney tried to push himself to a standing position but his limbs weren’t following his commands correctly.

“Jesus, be careful,” John reached out and pushed him back on the ground. “Don’t - - they’re fine - you need to stay where you are until - “ John broke off, breathing hard. For a moment Rodney thought that the contents of John’s stomach were about to join his own on the ground.

“Until what?” Rodney asked. His voice held an edge of fear that he’d tried very hard to train out of himself but he hurt and he didn’t know what was going on and by all rights he should be Wraith fodder by now and - and he was scared. “What’s going on?”

John’s hand went to the knife that he wore on his belt. “I need to cut it out.”

Never let it be said that Rodney McKay wasn’t a genius. His hand immediately flew up to feel the back of his neck and he hissed with pain as his hand came into contact with the site of his - oh god - his tracker incision.

Now that he knew it was there, the pain that he had been feeling all over his body seemed to concentrate in that one area, radiating out from the white hot centre that was his implant site.

“I - I don’t - why don’t I remember?” he asked John. 

John’s jaw tightened, the muscle clenching. “The beam took you. You were right in front of me and I couldn’t - - I came after you and - look, Rodney, we don’t have the time for that right now, ok? The fact is that the Wraith put a damn tracker on you, dumped us on a planet and I hauled your ass through the gate to the safest place I could think of and I need to get that tracker out before I take you home so the Wraith can’t track us to either the Alpha site or Atlantis.”

Rodney had a million questions, some of them good ones that really needed answered but his mind was still tripping over one particularly salient point. “You came after me?” 

“ _That’s_ your take away from this?” 

“You’re damn right it is! What the hell did you do? Step into the beam? What the hell were you thinking? They could have killed you. I’m still not sure why they didn’t. Do you have any idea how lucky you are that - “ Rodney stopped, his eyes going wide as he suddenly realised something. “Oh, God, I need to get it out of you too.” He grabbed at John, trying to force John to turn around and show him his neck. 

John bent his neck, letting Rodney run his hands over it. “I’m fine,” he said gently. “They didn’t put one in me, didn’t need to. Not when they had you.”

“That’s stupid.” Rodney didn’t understand. “Why would they let you go? What was to stop you from leaving me and - -“

“There is no possible reality where that happens,” John said, shutting Rodney down completely. “I would never - look, we don’t have a lot of time. I need to get that thing out of you.”

“You said we were safe. Where are we - wait, the planet we found Ronon - the one with the radiation that screwed with the transmitter.”

John shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah, that would probably have been smart. But, uh, remember that possible Alpha site Ford, Teyla and I checked out during our first year while you were on the satellite?”

“Please don’t mean the one with the T-Rex,” Rodney pleaded. 

“How’s about I don’t answer that and get this thing out of you instead?”

Rodney looked at the knife in John’s hand and swallowed hard. 

John saw his glance and misunderstood. “I can do this, Rodney. I saw them put it in and the scar tissue won’t have had time to form yet, it should be easier to remove than Ronon’s was. Trust me.”

“I do,” Rodney said, answering honestly. And he did. Sure, he’d rather the tracker was removed by Carson in more sanitary conditions but he’d been placing his hands in John’s life since the day they stepped through the gate and John hadn’t failed him yet. “I just - it’s gonna hurt, isn’t it?”

John’s attempt at a smile was weak. “Yeah, buddy. It’s gonna hurt.”

Rodney steeled himself. “Do it.”

——-

Rodney’s flesh parted around John’s knife like butter, the blood immediately pooling to streak down already blood stained skin.Rodney’s strangled scream around the belt he was biting was one of the worst sounds that John had ever heard and he knew he would be hearing it for a long time to come, every time he closed his eyes.

John stopped at the sound of it, lifting his hands away, breathing hard. What the hell made him think he could do this? 

Rodney’s hand reached blindly out behind him, searching for John’s hand and John squeezed it tight, trying to covey his regret and his guilt through that small bit of contact. 

“Finish it,” Rodney gritted out, the belt making his words barely intelligible. “Please.”

John squeezed tighter and then let go, picking up the knife again. He could do this, he would do this. 

He would do anything for Rodney.

Rodney passed out a few cuts later when John reached in to remove the implant, his scream trailing off into nothing as the pain overwhelmed him.

Once the tracker was crushed under the heel of John’s boot, John bent over, the contents of his stomach joining Rodney’s from earlier. 

If he ever needed another reason to hate the Wraith, he had it.

Rodney barely stirred as John lifted him over his shoulders. He’d take them home, detouring through a couple of gates before arriving at the Alpha site. 

From the moment he’d saw the beam take Rodney he’d feared the worst. Jumping into the same beam hadn’t even been a decision. It was a necessity. The Wraith had known that; had known that tagging Rodney was as good as tagging them both.

The only person who didn’t seem to know how John felt about Rodney was Rodney.

Maybe when they got home, John would do something about that.

The Wraith had forced John to hurt Rodney but maybe they could force him to do something good too.

**Author's Note:**

> Next up: corporal punishment.


End file.
